Decision on Hezbollah must come ‘very soon’, senior MK tells European diplomats
In Kiryat Shmona, Yuli Edelstein, head of powerful Knesset defense committee, warns ambassadors that ‘chances of diplomatic solution are getting lower and lower’
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
A decision about how to solve the Hezbollah threat in northern Israel “will have to be taken very soon,” a senior lawmaker told European diplomats in the evacuated northern city of Kiryat Shmona on Thursday.
“This way or that, through diplomatic efforts or a military operation, we will have to take care of it,” said Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, a former Knesset speaker who now chairs the powerful Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “It can’t drag on forever.”
Edelstein invited 23 European ambassadors, consuls, and attachés to tour emptied-out areas along Israel’s northern border, as well as the IDF Northern Command headquarters in Safed.
The veteran parliamentarian made his remarks only an hour after a man in his 30s was critically wounded by an explosive-laden drone near Kibbutz Kabri in the Western Galilee.
Earlier in the day, several suspected drones were shot down by air defenses over the Upper Galilee, as sirens rang out across northern Israel throughout the morning warning of incoming fire from Lebanon.
Hezbollah has traded fire with Israeli forces on a near-daily basis since October 8, stoking fears of a full-blown conflict in the north as well. The Iran-backed terror group has said it is attacking Israel to support Gaza amid the war, which began with the October 7 Hamas terror onslaught in southern Israel.
Around 60,000 residents of towns and villages along Israel’s northern border have been forced from their homes since October due to near-daily cross-border rocket and anti-tank missile attacks by Hezbollah and other terror groups in southern Lebanon.
The attacks have persisted despite constant Israeli warnings that it could launch a war to push the Hezbollah threat away from the border and return normalcy to the region. As a result of the continued fire, most evacuees are facing the prospect of remaining homeless for the foreseeable future.
“It’s quite clear to all the elected officials — the government, the Knesset — that it’s impossible to continue like this,” Edelstein told the diplomats.
The visit was organized with ELNET, an organization that works to build closer ties between Israel and Europe.
The group drove through the city’s empty streets, hopping off to view houses that had been hit by rockets or to talk to some of the 2,000 residents who refused to evacuate. On the slopes above, brown evergreen trees stood testament to the fires caused by the 671 rockets Hezbollah has fired at the city over the last 9 months.
The 24,000 residents are now spread across the country. The nearly 6,000 children are learning in 71 new schools set up by the municipality in hotels, kibbutzim, and cities further south.
“Kiryat Shmona became the biggest city in Israel,” a member of the city council told the diplomats. “We were 5 kilometers before the war, now we are 500 kilometers.”
Though the evacuation saved lives, he said, it gave Hezbollah “the biggest victory it could ever dream of.”
“Every day we remain evacuated gives Hezbollah a reason to celebrate.”
For all but one of the European visitors, it was their first time seeing the damage in northern Israel with their own eyes.
They were alarmed by the prospect of a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah.
“All European countries are conveying to the Lebanese government that this must stop,” an ambassador from a European Union country told The Times of Israel.
In a briefing with Northern Command Home Front coordinator Brig.-Gen. (Res.) Alon Friedman, an ambassador asked point-blank, “Is there going to be a war?”
Another asked how many brigades Israel has on the border, and how many more it would need to invade Lebanon.
The press accompanying the group was asked to leave the room before Friedman offered a response.
Edelstein told The Times of Israel that his main purpose in bringing the diplomats to the north was to bring Israel’s internal refugee problem to the fore in the minds of its allies.
“The situation with our evacuated population in the north is one of the best-kept Israeli secrets,” he said.
“People know that there is a military operation going on in Gaza and talk a lot about the suffering of the people in Gaza,” Edelstein explained. “They know that there is tension in the north and the Hezbollah is shooting and we are shooting. They vaguely remember that there was some story about the hostages, but no one even thinks that for nine months, tens of thousands of Israelis [have been living] in terrible conditions.”
He also wants to lay the diplomatic groundwork for a potential war against Hezbollah that Israel initiates: “If we need to have a military operation, there will be a better understanding that it’s not some kind of capricious move of Israel, but it’s a real necessity.”
Although he wants to see a diplomatic solution, he is not optimistic that it is even possible anymore.
“Every day that passes here and with the kind of an escalation we are all witnessing, the chances of the diplomatic solution are getting lower and lower,” he warned, but would not say if Israel has set a deadline before it gives up hope for avoiding war.
“It is not the question of the date. Nine months has already been too long. But I think it definitely depends on the situation in the south, and the moment it will be possible to concentrate enough efforts, forces, and intelligence.”
Israel, he lamented, “learned the hard way in October that a terror organization is a terror organization. And you can’t talk a tiger out of its stripes.”
